Bloggasm

Bill O’reilly, eat your heart out. In our continued war on missing and/or abused children, West Virginia is leading the fight.

Starting this fall, on school picture day, students in West Virginia will have to ‘say cheese’ twice. Two pictures will be taken, one straight on and one profile photo. Those two pictures will be combined using the AmberView technology, to create a 3-D image of that person.

The image will then be loaded into a computer that can alert police, media and other organizations in just a few minutes after a child is reported missing. When the Amber Alert goes out, the missing child’s 3-D image will be immediately posted on the AmberView website.

Colbert Low: My name is Colbert Low

I am the first Malaysian blogger to join an international blog network at Weblog Empire and we are now part of b5media as of 31 Oct 2005.

I am the editor for The Gadget Blog and I do reviews on cool new gadgets and related stuff. I also guest blog at Realtechnews.com and ohGizmo.com when I have the time.

The b5media.com Blogging Network that my Gadget Blog is a part of, was founded by the 3 greatest blogger right now. And we are growing like MAD….With over 150 blogs now!

Duncan Riley
Darren Rowse
Jeremy Wright

We’ve even been featured by big gadget websites like Realtechnews.com, Gizmodo.com, OhGizmo.com, theGadgetizer.com, Treehugger.net and Engadget.com, etc since June 2005.

Simon Owens: Whenever companies are working on new forms of technological gadgets, how much time do you think they focus on the look and style of an object compared to the technological aspects of it? Have you ever purchased a cell-phone or other technological device almost soley based on its look?

Colbert Low: Look and style does play an important factor. I guess they probably come out with it first and only then add in the functions. They probably spend the same amount of time designing it and adding features to it.

Simon Owens: As a gadget blog do you get a lot of press releases from technology companies? What do you think of blogs that simply print press releases without original content?

Colbert Low: I do get swarms of emails from PR agencies and newsletters every week. I try to sort them out every Friday as I do have a full time job as a Linux System Engineer too. I guess it’s important to add some comments to those press releases as some of them are quite bland and blogs are supposed to be more human-like and not regurgitate out the same old press release. If blogs do that, then we are moving backwards to the dinosaur age of text browsers.

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Kyle Orland got his start writing about video games when he started Super Mario Bros. HQ, a fansite devoted to the famous Nintendo mascot, in 1997. Since then he’s written as a freelancer for publications including Electronic Gaming Monthly, GameSpot, Next Generation, GameCritics and more. His blog, Video Game Media Watch, takes a highly opinionated look at the way video games are covered in the specialist and mass media.

Simon Owens: There’s been some somewhat recent lawsuits against video-game makers about video games promoting violence amongst teens. My best guess is that you wouldn’t agree with these accusations (if I’m wrong, please correct me), but do you think there will ever be a real conservative backlash against violent video games?

Kyle Orland: Well, I don’t know about a conservative backlash — Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman are among those out in front on this one. Every art form goes though these kinds of growing pains when they’re new, when the older generation in power is scared and confused by the younger generation’s unfamiliar new hobby. As time passes, the older generation will die out and the generation that grew up with games will realize that games didn’t cause them to become a generation of anti-social murderers and everyone will calm down. The key is to not let the older generation set the medium back with restrictions in the mean time.

Simon Owens: As video games become more technologically advanced, we’re seeing a division of players. On the one side we see the frat-boy types floating towards first-person shooter and sports games, while the more nerdy of video game players drifting towards role-playing or strategy games. Are there are a lot of games that bridge the gap between these two and offer both a lot of action and a lot of strategy at the same time?

Kyle Orland: This is a little simplistic division, but in general there are many splits in game preference. Western vs. Eastern. Hardcore vs. Casual. Console vs. PC. The best games can bridge the gaps between these groups, but they are few and far between. Tetris is probably the most universal, historically, but games like The Sims, the Mario and Zelda series, and even simple Windows games like Solitaire and Minesweeper all have incredibly wide reach. People who play these games might not consider themselves “gamers,” but they are. We need more games like this that expand the somewhat narrow definition of what video gaming is.

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Here is a step-by-step process for Re-surfacing CDs so they work again.:

Take some of the brasso and pour it onto the CD. Please be careful with the Brasso, and only perform this in a well ventilated area. I was making this guide at at the office, and forgot about the fumes. I had to polish the CD in the stairwell as I would have fumed out my co-workers otherwise.

Use the paper towel pieces to polish the CD. Polishing is ideal in straight strokes from the center of the disk to the outside so you polish perpendicular to the tracks on the disc. Because I was short on time, I used small circular motions similar to how I’d polish a car. Take your time with this. Add Brasso when it dries or gets pushed off the CD. Continue this process for about 15 minutes.

via fosfor gadgets

JaPundit is a Tokyo-based American-born Japanese-English translator who has lived in Japan for 36 years. He started Japundit on January 10, 2005, and was soon joined by Ampotan, another American who is a Japanese-English translator living in Kyushu.

Japundit soon will be adding a Japundit Podcast, which is scheduled to start on January 7, 2006.

Simon Owens: Over the last few years, Japanese horror films have become more popular in America. Why do you think this is? Do you think Americans are becoming bored with the traditional horror plot and are looking elsewhere for their movies?

JaPundit: I really don’t know that much about Japanese horror films myself, so let me turn this question over to Japundit contributor David Weber.

David Weber: Being a bit of a fan of scary movies and ghost stories (however not a scary movie buff per-say) I would say part of the attraction to Japanese horror movies or the dis-attraction from Hollywood horror has to do with these elements:

1. Suspense – good build up rather than cheap jump scares
2. Overall eerie atmosphere – sometimes something doesn’t have to happen in order for a movie or story to be scary
3. Less use of special effects for the scare – true fear comes from the imagination not some bloody CGI ghost/monster. A horrible ghost/monster should only be seen for a very, very short time either with proper build-up or completely out of the blue – or even just drifting quickly past in the background.

If you compare the original “The Haunting” with the remake you can see where special effects ruin any good scary moments. The original had a lot of creepy atmosphere and great camera shots that played with angles and shadows making the house in the film seem to brood. The original was too unreal looking and too over-the-top gothic and so it looked ridiculous. In the original, you wondered if the statues actually moved when the camera would show them from a different angle. In the remake the statues jumped around in a most unscary manner.

The original “Blair Witch Project” was well received because it worked on our imaginations and our fear of the unknown. However the sequel flew in the face of this and came us more Hollywood tripe.

Japanese horror works because it has that creepiness like those good spooky ghost stories we used to hear around the campfire when we were kids.

BTW a really good American ghost movie is “The Changling” with George C. Scott.

Simon Owens: Since Japan is at the forefront of modern technology, do you think that the Japanese are ahead in utilizing the internet as well?

JaPundit: First of all, I think that there would be plenty of people who would question the notion that Japan is at the forefront of modern technology. Of course, there are certain fields where Japan does seem to have a big lead, but then there are other areas where it lags far behind other countries.

Japan’s utilization of the internet is one of the areas where it tends to lag behind. The notion of the internet as a free and open resource that allows a free and open exchange of information was actually resisted quite strongly by the Japanese government at first. Various government ministries were at odds over who would control the new technology, and even developed their own, non-compatible networks that they hoped would become the Japanese standard.

Just recently, we ran a story on JAPUNDIT about a plan by the government to get in to the search engine business along with a number of giant corporations and major universities. This is pretty much the way things are done over here.

Simon Owens: Is the Japundit staff all Japanese bloggers? What made you guys come together to do this project?

JaPundit: The Japundit staff is quite a mixed bunch. Four of our regular contributors (me, Ampotan, David Weber, and Sylvain Bouchard) live in Japan, one (Danny Bloom) lives in Taiwan, one (Marie Mockett) lives in New York, one (KokuRyu) lives in Vancouver, and one (Tubbypaws) lives in the U.K.

Japundit was established by me, at first just to give me a place to talk about life in Japan. I had a (political) blog before starting Japundit, which I set up and designed on my own. Trouble was, hardly anyone ever read it. For Japundit, I decided to get a professional (Elegant Webscapes) to design it and make something that at least looked good.

Japundit launched on January 10, 2005, and I was soon joined by Bill Sakovich, another old Japan hand and good friend who writes under the name of Ampotan. It was the two of us who did all of the initial writing on the site during its early growth phase that really put us on the map.

As the readership grew, we advertised for more contributors, and ended up with our current group of writers.

Simon Owens: What are the five blogs everyone should be reading (besides your own)?

JaPundit: I noticed that you asked this of all the others that you interviewed, but I would like to take a pass on this question. We have so many contributors and readers working hard to produce their own blogs, I would hate to suggest that people should be reading one rather than another.